Mar 27: Buonasera Mag
Day 397: Bakhmut ChasivYar CyberAttacks Orban RUdefspending Gazprom Slovenia China Taiwan EE A&Ps Halushka Kolesnikov Rubryka ISW Panyi Davis Coates Hayden Briant Lautman Stein Garner
Catching up…
EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date- hop over to Scott’s amazing hourly Ukraine up-date page. I’ll fill in with some bits and bobs.
Stories we’re following…
Defense Ministry asks media to 'stay quiet' on Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar noted on March 25 that only three officials in Ukraine are allowed to announce strategic plans of Ukraine’s forces: President Volodymyr Zelensky, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, and Commander in Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
Over 300 cyber attacks registered in Ukraine in January-February. The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA), a body of the State Special Communications Services, registered more than 300 cyber attacks in the first two months of 2023.
Russia shells Toretsk and Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast, killing 2. According to Ukrainian presidential office head Andriy Yermak, one Russian attack killed a man in Chasiv Yar, five kilometers west of Bakhmut. Meanwhile, a woman was killed in a separate attack on Toretsk, 20 kilometers to the south.
Two people have suffered shrapnel wounds following an explosion on Sunday in the town of Kireyevsk, about 220km (140 miles) south of Moscow, the TASS news agency cited emergency services as saying. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but it left a crater in the centre of the town, in the Tula region, Reuters reports. The crater was caused by a drone, the TASS news agency quoted law enforcement as saying, Reuters reports. Three residential buildings were also damaged following the explosion, a regional security agency said.
Putin: Russia to modernize over 1,600 tanks over next 3 years, produce new ones. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on March 25 that his country planned to modernize 1,600 tanks available in its stock over the next three years, as well as ramp up tank production, Russian state media reported.
The so-called head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, believes that one of the conditions for the end of the war in Ukraine should be the transfer of Odesa under the control of Russia.
Russian defence spending: In 2022, in real terms, defense spending increased by 37.8%. The volume of expenditures on closed items of the federal budget in 2022 increased to 3.9% of GDP. Accordingly, the share of closed expenditures in the total expenditure part of the federal budget last year has also become larger - 19.2% versus 15.1% in 2021.
Russian media: Gazprom reduces gas export to EU via Ukraine by 15%. Gazprom recorded a gas transit flow of 42.5 million cubic meters from Russia to the EU through Ukraine's Sumy Oblast on March 24. On March 25, the volume fell to 36.2 million cubic meters, according to RBC.
Putin threatens to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on March 25 that his country intends to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus for training, the latest in Moscow's series of nuclear threats against Ukraine and the West.
Reuters: Pentagon sees no indication Russia plans to use nuclear weapons. The U.S. Department of Defense said on March 25 that there are no indications that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons after the Kremlin announced they plan to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Convicts in Russia can replace IT specialists who have gone abroad. The corresponding project for the Federal Penitentiary Service was developed by the prisoners themselves - a former programmer Akim Denisov and his friend, with whom he studied together at the Skolkovo school, Moskovsky Komsomolets writes. The average time spent by convicts in a colony is now about three years, and the average time for mastering an IT specialty is six months. This means that after a specialist is trained, he can work in the specialty for at least two years behind bars.
Julia Davis: Russian propagandists discussed Putin's statements about stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and various ways of attacking the West. The host concludes that it's not about morality or peace: "We need the world — preferably, all of it."
Moscow has stepped up its campaign to force Ukrainians to apply for Russian passports as it seeks to legitimize its annexation of occupied territories and integrate them into the Russian Federation. Access to medical services is also denied to those without a Russian passport or proof of having applied for one. In the Zaporizhzhia region, disabled people and those caring for them can only receive monthly aid payments if they re-register their documents, Ukraine’s National Resistance Center reported.
Kremlin to skip annual Earth Hour campaign after World Wildlife Fund named “foreign agent”. Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists the decision was made because the WWF is on the Russian Justice Ministry’s list of “foreign agents.”
Zelensky: Ukraine didn't receive peace mediation proposal from China. President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t receive a proposal to mediate peace between Ukraine and Russia from China, he told the Japan News. Zelensky said that he gave "straight messages" through the diplomatic channels that he wanted to speak with China's leader Xi Jinping but didn't get a response.
New EU sanction package to be adopted in the next two months. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in an interview on March 25 that the EU should adopt its 11th round of sanctions against Russia in the next two months despite some countries facing "fatigue" on continued support for Ukraine.
Russian spies detained in Slovenia allegedly worked for Russia’s foreign intelligence. “Maria Mayer” and “Ludwig Gisch,” two suspects arrested in Slovenia and accused of spying for Russia in January, allegedly worked for Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR).
Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger is the first German cabinet member to arrive in Taiwan in decades. The decision comes amid tensions with mainland China, as Beijing issues a diplomatic complaint over the visit. "If we combine Taiwan's chip production capacity with Germany's applications in some advanced industries, such as biomedicine and automobiles, then it will be a win-win cooperation in the following 10, 20 years or even 30 years," the Taiwanese official said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will battle on Sunday to put out the fires threatening his government as the three-way coalition meets for crisis talks on a growing series of disputes. The alliance got off to a good start in December 2021 under the motto of their coalition agreement -- "Dare for more progress". It was put to a tough test when Russia invaded Ukraine just two months on, upending decades of German economic and political certainties. But tensions have since soared -- particularly between the Greens and the FDP.
Chinese authorities raided the office of U.S. corporate due diligence firm Mintz Group in Beijing and detained five local staff, the company said, putting foreign companies in China on alert just as the country hosts an international economic forum. As per Mintz Group's website, the Beijing office is its only one in mainland China. The website says the company specialises in background checking, fact gathering and internal investigations.
New Zealand foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta has expressed concern to China over any provision of lethal aid to support Russia in its war against Ukraine during a meeting with her Chinese counterpart.
Q: Did you think this was a valid way of voting? (Re election disinfo)
Microchip: “Not at all.”Question asking why he posted so much in 2016:
Microchip: “To destroy the reputation of Hillary Clinton.”On using humor in political memes:
Microchip: “When people are laughing, they’re very easy to manipulate.”On strategy of using disinformation on Twitter:
Microchip: “I wanted our message to move from Twitter to regular society.”
“I wanted to infect everything.”Question on whether what he posted needed to be true:
Microchip: “No, and I didn’t care.”Question about how he handled the hacked podesta emails, which he said he posted about thousands of times a week and admitted that he didn’t find scandalous.
Microchip: “My talent is to make things weird and strange, so there’s controversy.”Question about what 4chan is. (Even as an FBI informant, he is still trolling.)
Microchip: “4chan is a place where internet intellectuals get together to discuss different topics.”Question about whether he thought fellow poster Ricky Vaughn was funny.
Microchip: “Not necessarily, no.”(Spoken with an air of dismissal.)
This was all from the prosecution— they appear to be establishing how this crew of disinformation posters worked together to manipulate the 2016 election:
Other highlights from the testimony: Microchip suggested it was more about destroying Hillary Clinton for him than about supporting Donald Trump necessarily.
Microchip laid out how he used bots and services like “AddMeFast” and “Fast Followerz” to make his account more visible on Twitter. He spent 300 dollars per month on these services.
You can bet that other random Trump posters did similar things.
Jeff Stein & Olga Lautman, Updated: Putin’s Ukraine Folly Enables Kremlin Rivals- SpyTalk
AS WE NEAR the one-year anniversary of Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine, the political fractures inside Russia are on public display—among the Moscow elite, the Wagner mercenary group, the intelligence services, the official propagandists and the Russian Defense Ministry. The “special operation” that Vladimir Putin expected to take three days is now bleeding into an eleventh month of setbacks and atrocities, exposing the Kremlin’s vaunted military might as both ineffective and cruel, with its strategy of targeting civilians with artillery and executions to break Ukrainians’ will and force Kyiv into surrendering. The strategy is failing, however, as millions of its citizens remain defiant and resilient despite the ongoing onslaught of terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, a power struggle is deepening between Russia’s military and the notorious Wagner group, which has played a central role in Moscow’s war crimes campaign. [continue reading]
Andrei Kolesnikov, Amorphous Together, The New Times
The Putin regime does not like that people want to live peacefully and well. It is necessary to live badly, and it is even better to give this very life “for the tsar”
“You know, after all, our society was amorphous. It has become much more prosperous than in the nineties, ”said Dmitry Medvedev , deputy chairman of the Security Council . Amorphousness, said the former president, was formed, among other things, due to the growth of consumer living standards: “Are they ready to stand up for their country, to defend it or not? That was also a problem. At the moment, in my opinion, it is solved. There has been a structuring of society, public interests, people understand that they must defend their homeland.”
In other words, they lived too well, focused on private life, forgot how to love the Motherland and “defend” it in a situation where no one thought to attack it - that is, to fight with themselves. Now, thanks to Putin, we will live worse, as it should be for truly Russian people, and we will learn how to heroically give our lives for Patrushev, Medvedev, Sechin, Chemezov, Manturov and other comrades. To everyone else, we promise nuclear armageddon. [continue reading]
